


The Nature Of Belief

by chicafrom3



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-12
Updated: 2010-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/pseuds/chicafrom3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Amelia Pond, and she was not exactly perfectly normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature Of Belief

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the fabulous allfireburns.  
> Find podfic, as read by allfireburns, [here](http://community.livejournal.com/amplificathon/523427.html)!

Once upon a time.

Because that's how these stories start.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Amelia Pond, and she was not exactly perfectly normal, though she had perfectly normal parents and perfectly normal friends and a perfectly normal home in Scotland.

In some universe, things unfolded for Amelia Pond in a perfectly normal way and she learned to behave like a perfectly normal girl and had a life that was, if not perfectly normal, at least a reasonable facsimile.

This is not that story.

In this story, Amelia Pond's perfectly normal parents go away, and tell her they'll be back in just a bit. She waits and waits, but they never come home.

Now, at this moment, Amelia Pond still has a chance. She still has a chance to grow up to be a reasonably normal girl with a reasonably normal life.

A chance.

But she is sent to her aunt in England, and Amelia Pond's life will never be normal again.

 

A box falls out of the sky, and a man falls out of the box.

People in her little village say this is the moment, this is what twisted little Amelia Pond's life so that it would never be normal.

People are wrong. That moment came before, came with an aunt and a new country and a crack in her wall no one believed in.

The man from the box believes, though. He talks to her and fixes the crack and then he runs away, promising to be back in five minutes. She waits and waits, but he never comes back.

She still believes he will, though everyone says she imagined him, he won't come back because he was never there, he's not real. But she knows he is (there's no more crack in her wall) and she knows he'll come back, because people might break their promises, but he isn't people.

Everyone says she isn't normal, that odd little Amelia Pond, so fixated on her Raggedy Doctor.

Amelia Pond hasn't been normal for as long as she remembers.

 

She is sent to psychiatrists, one after the other, because they are looking for answers: answers to why she isn't normal, why she draws pictures and writes stories about a man they don't believe exists. They find a stubborn, combative little girl, because Amelia Pond knows the difference between real and not, and she will not allow them to change her mind for her.

They keep trying to fix her.

She keeps clinging to the reality that she believes in.

Things crack around Amelia Pond, and no one really notices.

 

Amelia Pond grows up, because that is what little girls do.

They talk about her, the people of her little village, because that is what they do. They talk about that odd Amelia Pond and her Raggedy Doctor and what is she going to make of herself. She learns to ignore it, in the way she learns to ignore the cracks that seem to follow her around, the way she learns to ignore the door on the second floor that she doesn't want to look at.

She puts away her drawings and stories and dolls and pretends that he was never real, though every bone of her knows it for the lie it is.

She gets a job because she must, and even that sets tongues wagging, but she won't let that stop her. She's never been precisely normal.

And then…

And then he comes back.

 

"If there's no ducks," he asks, "How do you know it's a duck pond?"

"It just is," she says, and the words taste like a lie.

 

He goes away and comes back again, with more time in between, but Amelia Pond is the girl who waited and she is still there when he comes back.

And this time, finally, finally, he takes her with him.

And there is all of time and space and there is running and laughing and terror, and she knows – she thinks – she pretends that this is the life she was meant for.

But it doesn't take very long for this to become its own kind of normality, a very unusual normality, but normality nonetheless.

And she's never been normal.

 

There are cracks, and she pretends she doesn't see them, doesn't notice them, they aren't there.

This won't last forever.

He's not one to let things go unnoticed.

She refuses to believe that it's her fault. Her only reality has always been the one she believes in. If she doesn't believe it, it's not true.

It's not true.

 

There are things she learns about time, traveling in the madman's box. Things like causality isn't always a straight line, and B doesn't always follow A, and the past and the present and the future, they're all happening at once, really.

There are things she learns, and things she doesn't learn, because he doesn't want her to, because it's too early.

She doesn't learn that this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

At least, she doesn't learn it right away.

 

"It's not your fault," he says, and she can't tell if it's a lie or a partial truth.

"You are only responsible for your own choices," he says.

She stares at the crack running across the closest wall.

If she believes it's her fault, who is he to tell her otherwise?

 

In the end, she is the only one who can slay the dragon, rescue the princess, heal the kingdom.

She does what it takes to close the cracks for good and fix the breaks in time, properly now, and if there are tears, well, who can really blame her?

In real fairytales, there aren't happy endings.

Real faeries aren't so kind.

 

(In a garden in Leadworth, a little girl waits endlessly for her magic man to return in his box, sitting on a suitcase and holding her breath. In a town in Scotland, a child waits for her parents to come home again. In a bedroom in an English village a young woman gets ready for her wedding.

She believes in happy endings.

She doesn't know this isn't real.)


End file.
